A lone fisherman tries his luck amid blazing fall colors on New Brunswick's famed Miramichi River, the largest producer of wild Atlantic salmon in North America. Fisheries biologists estimate that nearly 40,000 grilse (salmon that have spent only one winter at sea) and more than 10,000 larger fish returned to the river and its tributaries last year. Yet that pales by comparison with the number that swam up the Miramichi in the 17th century. Early explorers who camped by the river were "unable to sleep, so great is the noise [the fish] made in falling upon the water after having thrown or darted themselves into the air."